Bubbling and frothing liquids

We present a discrete particle based method capable of creating very realistic animations of bubbles in fluids. It allows for the generation (nucleation) of bubbles from gas dissolved in the fluid, the motion of the discrete bubbles including bubble collisions and drag interactions with the liquid which could be undergoing complex free surface motion, the formation and motion of coupled foams and the final dissipation of bubbles. This allows comprehensive simulations of dynamic bubble behavior. The underlying fluid simulation is based on the mesh-free Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method. Each particle representing the liquid contains an amount of dissolved gas. Gas is transferred from the continuum fluid model to the discrete bubble model at nucleation sites on the surface of solid bodies. The rate of gas transport to the nucleation sites controls the rate of bubble generation, producing very natural time variations in bubble numbers. Rising bubbles also grow by gathering more gas from the surrounding liquid as they move. This model contains significant bubble scale physics and allows, in principle, the capturing of many important processes that cannot be directly modeled by traditional methods. The method is used here to realistically animate the pouring of a glass of beer, starting with a stream of fresh beer entering the glass, the formation of a dense cloud of bubbles, which rise to create a good head as the beer reaches the top of the glass. © 2007 ACM.